Maruti Suzuki

Narendra Modi, India’s pro-business prime minister, swept to power last year offering a new efficient form of government and a crackdown on the high-level corruption that has weighed on growth for decades.

But in a new report, analysts at Ambit Capital, a Mumbai-based brokerage, suggest that this otherwise positive shift may be negative for India’s rural economy – if only in the short-term. Read more

Maruti Suzuki led a two-track recovery in India’s car industry last year, dragging up overall sales while local competitors such as Tata Motors floundered. But new figures out on Tuesday have disappointed analysts in the festive period.

The 32 year-old brand, with a reputation for churning out reliable and affordable cars, posted net profits of Rs8.02bn ($131m) in the quarter ended December, up 18 per cent year-on-year. That’s well below an average forecast for profits of Rs9.06bn in a poll by Thomson Reuters. Read more

Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest car maker by sales, may have thought it would appease investors and critics with an empty set of clarifications on Wednesday, following a backlash against the company’s controversial $500m factory tie-up with its Japanese parent group.

Indian markets are closed for a holiday on Thursday, muting the reaction, but it seems the announcement is unlikely to mollify investors. Read more

What price a reputation? Earning a good one takes time. Losing it can take a moment. So some of the biggest companies based in Brazil, Russia, India and China may not be pleased to read a report issued this week by RepRisk, a consultancy that calls itself “the leading provider of business intelligence on environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks”. Read more

Major automakers are considering raising diesel engine production capacity in India to capitalise on exploding demand for the highly-subsidised fuel.

Toyota Motor and Maruti Suzuki, India’s biggest carmaker, have both said in the last week that they are mulling expansion plans. Ford and Volkswagen are also looking to boost diesel engine production capacity. Read more

Auto workers’ deadly attack on managers and supervisors at a factory of India’s biggest car-maker Maruti Suzuki last week has created tremendous unease among Indian corporate executives.

The question that has vexed Indian corporate executives and many foreign investors since then is whether the trouble at Maruti can be seen as an isolated incident, reflecting difficulties unique to the Japanese-owned car plant, or whether it foreshadows something more ominous in a country where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is rapidly widening. Read more

The factory riot that has hit India’s largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki, has seen the company’s share price take a battering. Down over 5 per cent on Monday trading, the company had already seen a fall of 8.9 per cent on Thursday.

The plant, which can produce 550,000 cars a year, has been shut since last Wednesday. But are the tragic events a sign of greater worker unrest, or an isolated problem? Read more

After a strong February, March was another a good month for car sales in India, as buyers sought to beat an excise duty increase that came into effect at the start of the new fiscal year on Sunday.

But whether the recent rally will last is another matter. With the new excise duty now in place, the industry will be watching closely to see how the broader economy performs and what decision the Reserve Bank of India takes on interest rates later this month. Read more

Indian car sales seem to be picking up after a lackluster 2011, according to February sales data from the country’s biggest car makers.

But while some of the numbers are impressive – with individual company sales rising 80 per cent or more from a year earlier – analysts cautioned that a few more months were needed before the improvement could be called a comeback. Read more

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